EmilyChurch

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Divergent pricing trends are emerging in the universe of tiny -- but growing -- companies that specialize in troubleshooting Year 2000 computer problems, industry insiders and consultants say.

Fees are rising for hardware and applications-assessment tools from $35-40 per PC to a base price of around $50-60. Companies that offer remediation services for custom applications are charging $20,000 to $30,000 today, up from $15,000-20,000 six months ago, said Paul Davis, product line manager at WRQ software, a private company in Seattle.

Companies that may capitalize on that trend include Keane (KEA)
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, Computer Horizons (CHRZ)
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, Alydaar Software (ALYD)
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, Computer Associates (CA)
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and privately held Cap Gemini America AND DMR Consulting Group, according to David Williams, vice president of sales and marketing at Primeon, a Burlington, Mass.-based Year 2000 company.

On the downside: prices for source code remediation in older programming languages like Cobol are edging lower, and have fallen about 10 percent in the last six months. Williams blames the decline on a more crowded field of programmers, but Don Moore, a marketing executive with Sicor, believes that's as far as the fees will drop.

Millennium services vendors are in New York this week to attend the Securities Industry Association trade show.

Desktop switch

Part of the pricing switch can probably be attributed to the latest Year 2000, or Y2K, focus: the desktop and computer networks. Companies like WRQ are shifting the marketing to PCs from mainframes.

WRQ said its desktop software package for Y2K, called Express 2000, looks to become the hottest seller in the company's 17-year history.

"It is at this time by far the largest volume of requests we've had for evaluation software," Davis said. The company has shipped 11,000 trial copies of its two-piece CD set since rolling the product out in May.

It is priced on a sliding scale from $65 a copy for 25 PCs down to $44 a copy for 10,000 users. WRQ is planning on introducing a product that addresses Y2K problems within documents as well, he said.

While a bit late in the Y2K world, WRQ expects "that a majority of companies will have a tool chosen for the desktop by the first quarter of next year. We have nine months of just going wild with this thing," Davis said.

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